Can “Genius” Be Trained?

Dream big dreams, and believe in the impossible.

One of the fun parts of writing a blog is learning. Yes it’s true, I learn from writing a blog about learning! In fact, I learn a lot.

First, I’m focused on the subject and am constantly thinking about ideas to share. I also subscribe to other blogs and read what others are writing. This helps guide me and helps me to present thouhts that are (or at least I think) useful.

In addition to Seth Godin, Tim Sanders and Chris Brogan, I read a blog from Boaz Rauchwerger. With a last name like Rauchwerger he goes by his first name Boaz. He emmigrated from Israel as a young boy, and has since become an accomplished author and motivational speaker. I heard Boaz speak about a year ago during a business seminar.

Now, I will be the first to say that Boaz is a little over the top. He is very energetic on stage and some of his stories are a bit, well let’s say exagerated. None of that matters though, because his message is so powerful and clear.

When reading his blog today, he started with a headline similar to the one I’ve used here. He tells the story and gives examples of how he worked with a young boy he helped greatly ehance his memory. The key point that I took away from Boaz today though is that, “the bottom line of the exercise was to prove that positive thoughts in the brain give us strength and negative thoughts tend to weaken us.”

Think about that little tidbit for a while.

A long time ago, my dad shared an Earl Nightingale trueism that “Anything your mind can conceive and believe, you can achieve.”

To me, both thougths are true and have great implications as we train and educate others. Taking those extra steps to assure that your learners have a positive experience is very important. Helping them to learn and understand the information, and then put it into practice depends on it. We hold that which is positive and discard that which is not. It is the human response.

The second thought may be even more important. In Scott Geller’s book “The Psychology of Safety”, he contends that the belief that “all injuries are preventable” a goal of “zero accidents” are not a good ideas and should be dropped as guide posts. He goes on to write, “The most important reason to drop them is that no one believes it anyway!” Wow!

I say dream big; create the vision; educate everyone to be geniuses; get everyone on the bus; and above all, believe that you can do this!